The developer puts August 4 as a tentative date for Hardfork ‘London’ rollout, though it may be delayed a week or two.
Ethereum Price Moving as London Update Nears. Anthony Sassano commented via his Twitter account the long-awaited fork with the EIP-1559 update for Ethereum will likely be discussed and announced on July 9, at the end of the week, during the mainnet developer meeting. He also revealed a tentative date for the implementation of the hard fork.
“I expect it to be August 4, but it could be delayed a week or two from that date, depending on various factors,” the developer commented.
The next update for Ethereum has been one of the most anticipated in the Blockchain space in 2021. ‘London,’ which will go live as a hard fork, will foreshadow the implementation of the highly anticipated EIP-1559 modification that solves some of the problems associated with the Ethereum network’s high transaction fees.
London will bring EIP-1559
The statement comes a few weeks after developers rolled out the London update on the Ropsten testnet. The Ethereum update went live on June 24 at block height 10499401.
Notably, the London hard fork includes five proposed upgrades for the Ethereum network. EIP-1559 is the most controversial and crucial. After being widely discussed, developers agreed to approve the proposal last March. EIP-1559 will introduce a dynamic fee structure and implement periodic fee burning.
Some have pointed out that the modification will make Ethereum a deflationary asset for the first time. An aspect that some analysts speculate will be an impulse to a price increase for the second-largest cryptocurrency.
However, reducing high transaction fees is one of the most discussed and expected aspects of implementing such a proposal. While Ethereum transaction fees have fallen from the all-time high of $70 (average) in mid-May, they are still too high for practical use and smaller transactions.
Although Ethereum software solutions provider ConsenSys has assured that London and EIP-1559 will not significantly reduce gas rates.
The amount of ETH on exchanges falls to a low
The review on the arrival of the London update to the Ethereum network comes amid a bear market. It has prompted a significant drop in ETH coins stored on exchanges.
According to CryptoQuant data, ETH stockpiles on centralized exchanges have seen a massive decline recently. Especially after the Ethereum price collapse in mid-May, investors rushed to deposit their tokens on trading platforms.
$ETH all exchanges reserve reaches a 2.5 year low
— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) July 5, 2021
View chart?https://t.co/E9Wve6QBFU pic.twitter.com/1kHBvF1rH5
Amid a sustained price decline, the volume of ETH coins on exchanges has fallen to its lowest in the past two and a half years. For prominent cryptocurrency trader and entrepreneur Willy Woo, such a factor may have two explanations, he noted on Twitter.
First, users withdraw Ethereum to lock it on various exchanges and DeFi apps, such as the Uniswap DeFi Token. The second reason, he believes, is that validators are staking their coins on the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract.
Ethereum’s staking implementation of a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm has become increasingly popular. ETH holders can place their coins as collateral in the network’s contract to generate long-term rewards. In recent months, the number of tokens sent to the ETH 2.0 contract has been rising.
According to the ETH2Validators account, a staggering 6,090,242 ETH (valued at $13.5 billion) has been locked into that contract.